At the age of fourteen, I first became aware that I had same-sex sexual attractions. I don't exactly know how the attractions developed or what triggered them but I knew that I began to look at other boys in the kind of way that I was meant to be looking at girls. When my parents were informed of this their response was one of fear, shame, and disgust.

I experienced bullying at high school, an ordeal which was so bad that I soon developed depression and became suicidal. I wanted to just be like the other boys and to fit in with everybody else but I was treated like an outsider, an odd-ball who was labelled 'a seedy faggot', a ‘poofter’, and other such names

Eventually I left that high school for a new school and soon made new friends and heard about Jesus Christ and having a personal relationship with God. At the same time, however, I wanted to explore my sexuality further and confided in the school counselor about how to handle my homosexual orientation. The counselor wasn't a Christian, despite working for a Christian school, and he encouraged me to assume a homosexual identity and declare it publicly, 'loud and proud'. The advice seemed to make sense at the time and for a year I 'came out of the closet' by revealing to fellow students that I was gay.

Soon after my eighteenth birthday I attended the annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras in Kings Cross.  Before going to the parade I thought that the Mardi Gras was an amazing display of human sexuality, but when I witnessed it first hand all I saw was an immoral, blasphemous, and degrading event. I thought it so obscene that it made me think twice about my direction and I wanted to know more about God.

Not long after the Sydney Mardi Gras, a Christian school mate began encouraging me to think about having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Despite much cynicism at first, I was astounded at the thought that God had gone to any lengths to have a relationship with me by dying the death on a cross.  After I read the New Testament it became obvious that God loved me so much. Finally I became a Christian and gave my life over to Christ in my final year of school.

Life changes:

The year 2001 for me was a very painful one when my mother died rather suddenly of cancer. I saw my family disintegrate. I spent a very difficult year alone while attending a church that simply wasn't equipped to help someone like myself who was grieving and struggling with the temptations of gay sex. 

I was incredibly desperate to be with anyone who was willing to give me time, affection, a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, and simply a hug for some comfort. It wasn't a woman that I wanted but a man, because to me a man represented all that I wanted my father to be: a pillar of strength and comfort that would love me in my agony and speak to me where I was hurting. My father at this time became even more distant and angry with me.

The fall

My father's reaction and my inner fear at confronting my loneliness drove me to experiment with gay sex for the first time. When I did, I experienced emotions of extreme liberation: no one cared about me, I thought, so 'acting out' with another man was of no consequence. More than anything else I wanted to hurt those who'd ignored me and by doing it, I got what I ultimately wanted; a man to hold me, give me his attentions and affections, and tell me how beautiful he thought I was.  

I'd made the dangerous assumption that God mustn't have cared as I reasoned to myself, "If God can let my mum die, my family fall apart, and leave me stranded with all the mess to handle by myself then no-on will give a damn if I let myself go". I remember getting the bus back home on the day I had that first sexual encounter and I read Psalm 51 over and over again, weeping in despair. I was genuinely scared because it sparked in me an incredible fear that I could possibly lose my salvation. After all, Revelation 21:8 promised that the sexually immoral would face eternal death and knowing how terrible God's wrath is, I definitely didn't want to go that way but that first encounter had sparked in me a desire to try and taste more sex.

I'd put myself on a downward spiral into sexual sin that would be very difficult later on to try and get out of. Stuck in sex addiction After my first 'dabble' with gay sex, I found my need for sexual contact grew rather than diminished, as if I'd tapped into a deep hunger that needed feeding. My first encounter, which was nothing more than a one-night-stand with a stranger, just wasn't enough for me because deep down I still craved the love of a man who would comfort me.

Soon I met a Filipino guy who gave me a little of what I wanted. Andy* was about my age and for three months I practically lived with his large family.   It was a period where I had extremely mixed feelings: on the one hand I knew I was sinning, but on the other hand Andy gave me the unconditional love that I hungered for and a second family that was willing to be a substitute for my own! Yet in the back of my mind I could hear a small voice telling me it was all wrong and that it had to end.

Ending the whole thing was a lot harder than starting it. When Andy and I first met we were just friends.  In fact I'd been asked by a fellow Christian to befriend him and share the gospel. I definitely turned out to be an ineffective witness because it was me who initiated the sex, and when it came to an end I felt the guilt of my sin, guilt from being a poor gospel witness, grieved that I'd destroyed a good friendship with sex, distanced from God because of my sin, and feeling extremely unworthy to come back to Him and ask for forgiveness.

When things ended with Andy I was back in my loneliness. On the one hand I was glad to be refraining from sex but on the other my heart ached to be back with Andy and his family. I prayed continually for the strength to be celibate but I craved the contact and there was nothing else to take the place of Andy and his family, and shortly after I was seeking sex again. I found it in shopping centres, Sydney city, in the suburbs, and did it with anyone who was willing to look at me.

Just to be looked at in lust by another man was enough for me, to have him crave me and hold me. It didn't matter at all that he only wanted to use me to gratify his own raw pleasure or that he looked at me like a piece of meat; he wanted me and that was enough. At the time it didn't matter that I was polluting my soul and it didn't bother me that I was doing degrading things with my body; in fact I gladly did them because I loathed myself and craved the contact of another man. Nothing else mattered.

I never used protection and every time I had sex I diced with death but I was getting what I craved. I noticed that I began feeling less and less guilty the more I did it and eventually I started to even justify my addiction to myself. Confronted by the darkness I went from having anonymous sexual encounters once every three months to eventually once a week.

I became very adept at getting gay sex: I knew other gay men liked my looks and I could spot them a long distance away. I could throw another guy a subtle, suggestive glance and be standing naked with him literally five minutes later in a public toilet, risking imprisonment, venereal disease, and even death. It didn't take much effort to get what I was after and there were an ample number of places in the city where I could snap it up.

It was then that I started to see how dark the gay life was. I discovered that it was very common to have sex with people whose names I never knew, and it was scary. Any of those guys could have robbed or stabbed me and few of them ever asked me if I wanted to use protection. God be praised that I never contracted AIDS or anything else, but boy I was taking a Russian roulette-style gamble every time I did it. That in itself was scary but not knowing the names of the guys I was with made me question the whole thing. I often told them my name and asked them for theirs, always asking them some basic information about themselves like, 'Where are you from?', 'What do you do?' and ‘What kind of music do you like?' They were always so shocked when I chatted with them because they said no other man they'd had such encounters with ever asked them about themselves.

Deep inside I cared about every man I had sex with and it saddened me profoundly that they were trying to find love by surrendering their bodies so willingly to complete strangers who didn't care about them and merely wanted to use them. Sadly, none of them thought there was any way out and I could understood only too well because I had surrendered to my addictions too.

The other worry I had about these guys was how willing some of them were to say they loved me after just one fling. One man became obsessed with me and offered numerous times to live with me. His obsession told me that all this casual, anonymous sex was having a deep impact on all involved, that it wasn't just a physical act but something that impacted us emotionally. Every time I walked away from those guys it agonised my heart because it was as if our souls had meshed together and we had left a little part of ourselves behind with each other.

I remember one night looking at myself in the mirror, lying with a man and thinking, 'What am I doing here?' Thousands of images of hard-core gay pornography raced through my mind, some so corrupt and perverted I vow never to even mention them, and I felt despondent about how damaging it was.

One night I hooked up with a guy in the city and he took me to a sex shop, leading me to a darkly-painted cubicle. It had a television screen on the wall opposite the door, which screened endless clips from pornography videos. For the first time in my life I was absolutely terrified; I thought the man I'd met was going to beat me if I didn't do what he wanted.  I was a slave to those whom I'd given my body to and in that dark place it felt like hell.

I felt so distanced from God and just wanted to be safe in His almighty arms, protecting me from myself and those who wanted to use me. That night I stood at the entrance of the mammoth St. Mary's Catholic cathedral and prayed through agonising tears as I read the first three verses of Psalm 40: I waited patiently for Yahweh; He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth— praise to our God; any will see it and fear, and will trust in Yahweh.

My problem was I couldn't wait for God to get me out of the miry clay: I wanted Him to do it then and there. I prayed over and over that God get me out because I truly had no one else to turn to. I was alone at the cathedral and could only ask God for all the help He was prepared to give me.

Hanging out to dry I made a commitment to abstain from sex and with a determined focus but rather than do it all on my own as I'd tried earlier.  I knew I needed the support of others. I got back in touch with my counselor, read books on the subject (Desires in Conflict by Joe Dallas and Growth Into Manhood by Alan Medinger.  The latter proved most helpful, on developing a long-term recovery strategy.

I filled my church minister in on what was going on and he had some helpful ideas. I connected with some trustworthy Christian men at church, particularly older married men who had the wisdom of years behind them rather than guys my own age, and prayed with them as need arose. I had many things that I knew I had to work on and the magnitude of them all was exhausting, but I chose instead of trying to fix them all at once, I'd do one at time, little by little.  I remembered a saying of my dad which has always stuck with me: inch by inch is a synch, yard by yard is all too hard.

Aside from that, I also set up good habits for myself. I deleted all phone numbers and email addresses of old flames and cut of connection with them all, regardless of my ongoing feelings for them. That was extremely hard but I knew that I had to make hard choices in order to make any progress. I never went to the city at night and avoided all places where I knew I could pick up sex. I came up with creative ways to keep myself busy (by reading, writing, doing exercise) and moved into a house with a group of Christian men. I took the Internet out of my bedroom and was quickly able to resist fantasizing and stop masturbating.

Before my mannerisms and clothing suggested I was gay and sent signals to interested men. So I worked on acting more manly, observing other men and imitating the way they moved, spoke, and behaved. I trained myself to take an interest in things that other men were interested in, like sport, and surprisingly became passionate about them!

The moment I did that, my relationships with other guys improved dramatically and I was able to join them in conversations about things that they liked. I felt like 'one of the guys' and I noticed that more men wanted to get to know me, something I'd never experienced before! It was incredibly liberating.

God was extremely good to me at the time: I had moments of weakness when I slipped up but I kept turning back to God in spite of my guilt and prayed to Him. Often when I was tempted I'd send up a prayer to find the strength to resist and God always answered it. The first three months were the most difficult because a part of me missed the old way of life and was hungry to return to it. In those times I was reminded of Luke 9:62 where Jesus said "No one, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God".

Back to Square One

At the end of the 2005 I was feeling particularly depressed and lonely as many of my friends were away on Christmas holidays. Although I was 'on the mend' and had grown incredibly between 2004 and 2005 there were still remnants of sin in my heart. I was clinging in emotional co-dependency on my friends and was emotionally unstable. I was suffocating those who loved me by calling them too much, expecting them to always be there when I demanded and I was depending on them much more than I was on God.

In that year alone I'd burned out around seven people and I felt as if I was back at square one and in a moment of weakness I went to a shopping centre, found a man willing to sleep with me, and fell. Deep down I was disappointed with myself because it inflamed my temptations and took me back to where I started twelve months before.

Asking for the Unusual  

At the time I again turned to God, humbling myself by even lying prostrate on the floor and begging Him for strength. All I knew was that sex belonged in marriage and since I'd lost control of myself I must need a wife. So in my despair I asked for a wife, not really knowing if I'd ever be given one. It was a weird thing to ask for because until then I'd never had a girlfriend and all my sexual experience was with men: if I did get a wife how would I be able to live with her and be intimate given my past?

In spite of the worries I had, I knew I just had to trust God with those things if they eventuated, knowing that if He was able to help me with self control He could help me be a husband. Around that time I got in touch with a Korean student friend of mine whom I'd met at church and asked him to introduce me to his sister. I pressured him for a while and just before my 26th birthday, he introduced me to her and we started getting to know one another from a distance. 

I told her about my struggles and she confided in me about the bad things that had happened in her own life, about how she'd survived an alcoholic and abusive father, being abandoned by her parents, family, and friends, and we instantly connected at a very deep level. We cried together on the phone about our pasts and I told her that the most important thing to me was simply living a life like Jesus.
She thought that was remarkable and I then started making plans to visit her face to face in South Korea.  

Five months later, I packed my bags and met my girlfriend in Incheon airport. It was amazing for me to finally be with her, to hold her hand, and look lovingly into her loving eyes. I could see her quiet gentle spirit and a loveliness that I'd never seen in any other woman before. I used the time in Korea to get to know her and her friends and to meet her family. I was assured that she was the woman God had planned for me to have and in spite of our many linguistic and cultural barriers I could see her unquestioned love of God and a desire to serve her husband. I felt God was telling me that she was the woman He'd planned for me and she felt the same about me.

Given the Unusual

 I returned to Australia and eventually she came to Sydney to live there for three months, to meet my friends and family and get a feeling for life in Oz. By that stage we'd started making plans to get married and in early 2007 tied the knot in a small church in Sydney, before flying over to Seoul for a honeymoon. While on the honeymoon we conceived a baby and now we're happily married with a gorgeous little girl.

The first year of our marriage was extremely challenging with many circumstances working against us. I lost two jobs, changed career, lost about $20k, survived a car accident that almost killed us and our unborn child, had a baby, had a lot of arguments, mostly a consequence of our clashing culture and language. 

We had frustrated expectations, and struggled with our own sinfulness. Aside from my sexual attractions I also had anger, bitterness, depression, and unforgiveness.  In that time God showed me that in fact the bitterness was a backdrop to my homosexual attractions and that the gay issue was secondary to the greater sins that were festering in my heart.

Things are a lot calmer than before. I'm able to work on the deeper problems within and experience a spiritual renewal that I'd not had before. God hasn't 'cured' me, to use a crass term. He's healing me and that's the difference.

Has marriage made my struggle any easier? In many ways marriage does make it easier because I am able to express myself sexually with another person and for her to pray with me, but the core of sexual problems is inner brokenness. I trust God that He can still do His work and heal me. I need to forgive others and myself and surrender my bitterness to God. Marriage doesn't heal brokenness and in fact in can be a playground of sin where people vent their sinfulness onto the people they love the most.

Some SSA men think that marriage will 'cure' them of their same sex attractions and others believe it's a mark of spiritual maturity when someone with SSA does get married. Neither is true. In my case God gave me my wife just as I was coming out of sexual addiction.  I'd sincerely given my heart to God in complete surrender and in His grace and goodness God decided to give me my wife. It wasn't because I deserved it or was good enough; He just gave her to me.

Sex with my wife is a beautiful thing because we know each other and care about one another. My wife isn't a piece of meat for my momentary pleasure; she's the loving doe that God has blessed me with. I'm to present her holy on the last day when God returns and I love her more than myself. Besides that, my body is hers and that helps me a lot when it comes to abstaining from masturbation and fantasizing over men.

We're open about my temptations and she prays for me, which is amazing because I can see that she cares so much. The best part about our marriage is that it's grounded in the light of Jesus. Our sex is pure, not guilt-inducing. We never do anything that degrades the other person and we try as much as we can to serve the other person, not to take away from them for selfish gratification. In spite of my original concerns that I wouldn't find her body attractive and arousing, God has been very good in answering my prayers.

I've never had problems being intimate with my wife and it makes me believe that every man with SSA has it in him to be physically one with a woman in marriage. No one is born gay.  No one can be a gay Christian because God has made us for heterosexual sexual unity.  Jesus, His Father, and the Holy Spirit can heal and change people and it's not just me. There's no excuse for failing to trust God because He does transform.

Still Christian?

At the time I was in sexual addiction I remembered a passage from the Bible which said that God gives people over to commit acts of sin as a sign of His judgement (Romans 1:24-25) and I convinced myself that God had given me over and given me up. That, of course, was a lie that came from Satan to keep me from being saved, but I really thought I was too unlovable to ever return again.

At the time I thought I was losing my salvation and yet God sent signs that He still loved me and wanted me to return to Him. I knew that Jesus' blood had me in right relationship with God but that my sin was a denial of my true identity. By living the gay life I was living in denial because true living was to live in obedience to God. In situations like mine, spiritual attack is guaranteed because sin puts us at a distance from God and that's exactly what Satan wants.

The Devil's a roaring lion who hates life and seeks to devour (1 Peter 5:8) and when people give themselves to sin he'll whisper lies in their ears to keep them away from God, saying things like 'God doesn't love you, God made you gay and he's trying to hold back good things from you. God doesn't give a _______ about you. Did God really say gay sex is evil? God can't forgive you! You're sin's too deep and you're too filthy for God. You're unworthy so give in to me'.

Satan often whispered those lies in my ear and I was absolutely terrified. I knew it was my fault for giving into sin, and thereby giving the enemy a licence, but I became deeply worried that I'd lose God. Key to surviving it all was to open the Scriptures, no matter how low I felt, and ask God to show me His grace.

I knew I was unworthy of forgiveness but I remembered that that's the whole point about grace! It's precisely because I was unworthy that God saved me and wanted me to live for Him. It was one of the many times in my life where I could clearly see God's love and I couldn't help but respond and return to Him with a clear determination to put it all behind.